You have a month to prepare before the jam begins. Here are some resources in the meanwhile to get your creative juices flowing:

Here’s all the resources posted to the original Open World Jam’s discord server during its 2022-25 run:

World, Map and Level Design

• World Design: Designing Huge Playspaces
• Polygonal Map Generation
• Urban Planning in Games
• The Importance of Nothing: Using Negative Space in Level Design
• World-design and level-design resources by Alexander Kullman

Mechanics, Routes and Interconnected Worlds

• Super Mario 3D World’s 4-Step Level Design
• Super Mario’s Invisible Difficulty Settings
• Super Mario World level-design analysis
• How to Design a Great Metroidvania Map

Art, Models, Materials and Textures

• Collaborative Art Resources
• 1 Year Plan to Learn to Draw
• French drawing tutorials — Forum Dessiné
• THE BASE MESH
• ambientCG
• Blender Rock Generator tutorial
• MakeHuman Community
• Midjourney

Engines, Dev Tools and Technical Learning

• RPG Paper Maker
• Alba: How to Build a Performant Open-World Game
• Tools by Watabou

Audio, Music and Sound design

• Freesound
• Sonniss GDC Game Audio Bundles
• Sonniss Game Audio GDC

If anybody has any resources related to open-world game design and related topics, please feel free to post in this thread.